TrademarkVision: AI- Powered technology for Visual Brand Protection

Sandra Mau, CEO

Protecting the intellectual property and brand identity of a company in the global marketplace is an uphill task for any organization. Organizations historically needed to rely on text-based clearance or infringement searching for image trademarks and design patents, requiring a painstaking description of the pictures through keywords, something that is both time-consuming and costly. “To add to the complexity, these image labels are subjective, error-prone, and vary from country to country. This has not only made brand and IP protection globally a challenge for companies of all sizes but also has made the task of IP officers much more difficult,” states Sandra Mau, CEO, TrademarkVision. Sandra spun her revolutionary work in computer vision security monitoring from an Australian research organization and founded TrademarkVision with a simple goal of building an AI system that would enable any computer to analyze and compare brand images just like any human would.

In 2013, TrademarkVision unveiled the world’s first visual search engine for global IP clearance and infringement searches for image trademarks (logos). Utilizing advanced machine learning and image recognition technologies in combination with a database of 20 million trademarks and training data from numerous law firms and IP offices, the AI engine was an innovation to look out for. Organizations, leveraging the TrademarkVision’s platform and its database, could shift from complicated text-based keyword searches to seamless image-based searching and comparison of trademarks and more to protect their brands and safeguard themselves from brand infringement cases globally.

TrademarkVision was founded to build computer vision and AI technology that would enable a computer to analyze and compare brand images and protect their visual identity

Having witnessed substantial growth with its novel visual search engine for trademarks, the company next decided to address design patent protection and infringement cases. Mau mentions that this was a big challenge as a 3D object is represented by multiple 2D images taken from various angles in contrast to a single 2D image for any trademark. Despite such silos, TrademarkVision successfully developed an intelligent visual search engine for design patents, implemented by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) this year. Quite similar to its trademark counterpart, this novel engine would enable organizations to ‘visually compare’ their designs with millions around the globe in order to protect its own designs and avoid potential patent infringements. “Taking a step further, we have recently entered the brand licensing industry in partnership with one of the largest companies in the domain, IMG CLC. This is only the beginning and our ultimate vision is to address and lead in every segment of visual brand identity and IP protection,” proclaims Mau.

Since its inception, TrademarkVision’s visual search engine has become instrumental in brand protection strategies of numerous private and government organizations. The company’s partnership with several Intellectual Property Offices, including the EUIPO, Chile and Australia, has brought the solution to the general public and meant TrademarkVision’s search engine seamlessly powers thousands of trademark and design searches around the world every day.

Such partnerships have been more than mere success stories for TrademarkVision; acting as rich sources of extra data. These associations have assisted TrademarkVision to greatly strengthen its system’s AI and hence develop more innovative solutions in trademark and design searching, brand licensing, and anti-counterfeiting. Riding on such innovations, the firm aims to enhance its lead as the ideal AI provider in global brand and IP protection for all, from a sole IP owner to the largest of enterprises.